Senior Portrait
by nikkilittle
Summary: It's 1976. A senior girl in high school has spent her entire life as a tomboy. Rarely wearing a dress. Never wearing makeup. Almost never varying her hairdo. So what happens when she shows up the day of the school yearbook portraits with a new hairdo, a new dress, and wearing makeup for the first time ever? A portrait of a lost era.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1: "Rod Serling's Intro"

"Hello. My name is Rod Serling, and welcome to tonight's episode. A senior girl in high school has spent her entire life as a tomboy. Rarely wearing a dress. Never wearing makeup. Almost never varying her hairdo. So what happens when she shows up the day of the school yearbook portraits with a new hairdo, a new dress, and wearing makeup for the first time ever? It's a step into the Twilight Zone as she finds out just how shallow her classmates really are."

End of Chapter 1

This story is a new episode of "Twilight Zone." Viacom owns the copyrights.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: "The Night Before"

It was 1976. I think I was lucky to go to high school in the 1970s. It was in the age before the Internet. There was no Facebook. There was no Twitter. There was no YouTube. There was no cyberbullying. It was the night before the yearbook portraits were taken. My copper-red hair was shoulder-length and slightly curly. People called it my "lion's mane." I wasn't much for glamour and didn't really want to fool with my hair. Other than shampooing and an occasional haircut at the barbershop, I didn't do much with it. Oh, yeah. I got my haircuts at the barbershop with all the men. Cheaper that way. Going to the barbershop was all by itself enough to get me labeled weird. The year of my senior yearbook portrait, however, was different. That year, I went to a salon to get my hair done. It was my first trip ever to a hair salon.

"Off with the lion's mane!" I told the hair stylist. I opted for the classic "Pageboy" cut. The stylist wanted to straighten my hair, but I declined. "So I'll have a curly pageboy," I said. I sat quietly in the hair stylist's chair hoping she would finish quickly so I could get home and get my usual four hours of homework – oh, how I hated the backbreaking homework load! – out of the way. By the time I ate dinner and finished my homework, it was usually time to go to bed. Sometimes I had as much as seven hours of homework. Those nights I didn't get to bed until midnight, and was exhausted the next day. I was number four academically in the senior class, but when I rode the bus to school already exhausted before the schoolday had even begun, I sometimes envied the idiots who the rode the bus with their hands in their pockets. No books. The idiots never did their homework. I envied them for the full night of sleep they always got.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3: "Morning"

I got all prepped for school early that day. I had on a new dress, I had a new easy-to-maintain hairdo, and I had a special task to do before I left for school. I walked next door to a friend's house. She had agreed to apply makeup to my face before we left for school.

"It's about time you had some makeup on your face!" my glamourpuss friend scolded me. "Let's see what you really look like when you've got makeup on your face like most of the other girls."

"I've heard too many horror stories of girl's faces breaking out in hives after applying makeup. I never had any interest in trying. I only agreed to let you put makeup on my face because it's powdered minerals."

"I refuse to use anything else. I found out the hard way that I'm allergic to nickel. Most cheap makeup is contaminated with traces of nickel and lead. Some of it even has arsenic."

"Oh, tasty. Skip the lipstick on me. I don't want to swallow any of that stuff."

"I don't have any lipstick. I don't use it, either. You don't need lipstick with that babyface."

"Lightly, please. Don't cover my freckles. I don't want to look like I'm wearing a mask."

My friend always delighted in telling me that I had a babyface. She couldn't figure out how a short, skinny, tiny 100-pound waif like me could have chipmunk cheeks and a chubby-looking heart-shaped face. She spent about ten minutes fussing with my face, and then applied mascara to my eyelashes.

"All done!" she crowed, as she hustled me to the vanity in her bedroom. "You look like Jill Haworth in the movie 'Exodus'!"

"Who is Jill Haworth?" I asked.

My friend rolled her eyes. She, her father, and her mother were all movie buffs. I didn't have time to go to movies. I was always doing homework. I used weekends to catch up on writing papers. I utterly despised "term projects." Just another sneaky trick used by teachers to pile on even more homework. You might think that I hated school. You would be correct. I hated school with a passion. I was number four on the academic lists. And I hated school. "Why does school have to be such an exhausting slog?" I sometimes asked my teachers. They all gave the same reply: "It's the same for teachers, too."

We walked to the car in her driveway. My friend's mother had agreed to drive us to school so our new hairdos, new dresses, and fancy makeup wouldn't get messed up on the school bus before our pictures were taken. A wise bit of premonition. I heard at lunch that day that all the school buses were zoos with kids messing up each other's hair, clothes, and makeup.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: "Period One"

No homeroom in my high school, thankfully. In junior high school, I called it "homework destruction period" as the idiots would try to destroy homework done by the smart kids. I kept all my books in a bookbag to keep my precious homework out-of-reach. It was insane to try to do anything in homeroom. It was always pure chaos.

I was stopped on my way in to my first period Chemistry class before I even reached my desk. "Lecherous Larry" I called him. I gave him that name because he was always hitting on the prettiest girls in the class. They always pushed him away with the tip of an index finger, usually accompanied by an exclamation of "Ewwwwwwwww!" He had never paid any attention to me.

"A new girl in class! When did you arrive? And do you have a date for senior prom?"

I looked at Lecherous Larry startled at his sudden attentiveness. Two more boys quickly appeared beside me, vying for my attention. I was surrounded and suddenly felt downright dizzy.

"Cat got your tongue, doll?" asked Lecherous Larry while staring down the other two boys. "How about going to see a movie this weekend with Sir Larry!" The other two boys continued to watch silently hoping to see me cut down Lecherous Larry. Were they hoping for a chance, too?

"The bell's about to ring. I need to get to my desk." I moved toward my desk and Lecherous Larry followed me. The other two boys looked at the clock and scrambled for their seats. I sat down in my desk which was the front desk in the row next to the windows. Lecherous Larry stared at me.

"You can't sit there, doll. Some mousy little tomboy named Nichole sits there."

"I am Nichole," I said. Lecherous Larry stood there staring at me with his mouth hanging open and suddenly erupted.

"Nichole is as plain as dirt! You couldn't be Nichole!" The bell rang and the teacher walked in. She had heard the exchange. She scribbled on a piece of paper, ripped off the carbon for herself, and handed the white part to Lecherous Larry.

"You're out of your seat and the bell has rung. Tardy." The paper was a detention slip. The entire class erupted in laughter. What made it especially funny was that this teacher almost never gave a detention slip. At least in our class. Lecherous Larry slinked back to his seat with his cheeks crimson red. Every once in awhile, I could see him staring at me out of the corner of my eye. He couldn't believe it was me. The other two boys stared, too.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5: "Period Two"

Advanced Placement History. History for college credit. This teacher lectured the entire period and never asked any questions. When taking attendance, he walked down the aisles with a seating chart in his hand and wrote any absences on a sheet of paper. Then he entered absences into his grade book. I don't think I'd ever heard him mention one of our names. As a result, I knew the names of almost no one in this class, and almost no one knew my name. It was a bizarre class.

The instant I walked in the door, the boys mobbed me as if I were a new exchange student. I had six boys around me all competing against each other for my attention. I knew the names of none of them. I quickly squelched the ardour of the boys.

"I'm flattered at all the attention, guys, but you do all realize that I'm Nichole?"

"Who's Nichole?"

Now this caught me by surprise. I walked over to my seat.

"I sit here."

Now the boys all looked at each other not quite believing it. Finally one spoke.

"You're the flat-chested tomboy with the wild hair?"

"That's me." I pulled my dress tight over my non-existent bust to emphasize the complete lack of bustline there. They got the message. They were all hitting on the flatsie. Oh, the horror! Finally one spoke.

"Damn! Makeup is gettin' so good these days ya can't tell who's good-lookin' and who ain't!"

The boys all lost interest as soon as they discovered who their glamour girl was and drifted back to their seats. "Good riddance!" I thought as they all walked away. They had never paid any attention to me before. I'm sure I would have spurned any one of them who had continued to express an interest.

Near the end of the period, an announcement came that yearbook portraits for Seniors would begin. We were to be called by the first letter of our last names. The order of the letters was to be random. I got lucky and was in the second group. At this point, of course, all teachers with Seniors in their classes gave up trying to teach with groups constantly coming and going. The portraits were a strictly perfunctory affair with only about ten seconds being spent on each student. Three quick shots and pick one later for the yearbook. Pure factory assembly line. Third period had already started when my portraits were taken.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6: "Period 3"

Teachers watched us all like ravenous hawks as we stood in line. The metal shop teacher, a big, burly Russian Bear type built like a Mountain Gorilla yanked out of line anyone who dared to muss the appearance of another student. The teachers all knew about the chaos that had occurred on the buses and were determined to prevent a repeat. Quite a few of the girls had compacts out and were touching up and repairing makeup. As I watched them, I silently gave thanks for my total lack of interest in makeup. They all looked like self-absorbed princesses to me. I did not want to be one of them.

I had somehow made it through two passings in the hallway without anyone successfully messing up my makeup. I had been very wary and had avoided groups of girls in the hallways. I had buried myself inside groups of boys. None of the boys ever tried to mess up a girl's makeup. Only the girls did that. I did get two pinches on the ass, but I laughed at that. I had nothing back there to pinch.

When my turn was over, period three had begun and I walked swifly to my next class. Art class. Never any homework. Thank heaven. I took advantage of the opportunity to duck into the restroom before returning to class. No one in there. A rare opportunity. After finishing my business and washing my hands, I lingered in front of the mirror in front of the hand sinks. How could such a simple thing as makeup make me so unrecognizable to so many people? The makeup did not cover my freckles although it did make them less obvious. I looked less pale. Was that it? I didn't think the makeup made me look prettier, it just made me look different. It hit me that with makeup on, I looked more like an adult and less like a kid. Was that it? Was that really the difference? I scurried out of the restroom with my head full of thoughts.

The teacher was giving a study hall, and since most of us in there were grinds, everybody had his or her nose buried in a book. Everyone was taking advantage of an opportunity to catch up on homework. No one even looked up as I entered. I took my seat and promptly buried my nose in my French textbook. I had a test coming the next day. One period of blessed peace. No one tried to hit on me.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7: "Period 4"

Period four was a study hall, so I went to the library and signed in. Students had the option to go to the library during study halls, and I took advantage of every opportunity to go. The library was quiet. Study halls were almost always zoos, and it was impossible to get anything done in them. Only the geeks and grinds went to the library, it seemed. I thought I would be left alone in the library, but I was wrong. While I was signing in, a football player cornered me.

Townsend, a wide receiver on the varsity football team. One of the golden boys in the school. Big, muscular, tall. He was trying to flirt with me. I was a full foot shorter than him. He also had a girlfriend. Big Boobs Barbara. Medium height. Perfect hourglass figure. Boobs the size of footballs. Face like a funhouse nightmare. Why was he trying to flirt with me?

"Hey little Red! I've never seen you around here before. Are you a new student?"

"No, I've been here since tenth grade."

"I've seen you before?"

"Yes, you have. Many times."

"I'm stumped. Who are you?"

"Nichole."

"I don't recognize the name."

"Of course not. You never asked."

"I'm sure I would have remembered you."

"This is the first time I've worn a dress and applied makeup. The hairdo is completely new, too."

"Never worn a dress before? Never worn makeup before?"

"Nope." I could see the gears grinding in his head. Slow realization washed over his face. He backed up from me with panic starting to appear in his eyes.

"No. It couldn't be. You couldn't be that flat-chested tomboy with the wild lion-like hair. You couldn't be."

I pulled my dress tight over my chest showing the complete lack of a bustline. I lifted my hair out showing the slight curls that were still there. The slight, fluffed curls that gave my hair the appearance of a lion's mane.

Mr. Wide Receiver, the glamour boy, fled. Didn't say a word. Just backed away and then fled. Oh, the shame! The everlasting shame! He had hit on a flatsie. I walked to an empty table way in the back among the stacks of books in the direction opposite to which Mr. Wide Receiver had fled. I pulled out my English class folder and started working on a composition that was almost finished and due on Friday. For the remainder of the period, out of sight back there in the stacks, I had blessed peace. Lunch, which took place in the middle of period 4, however, was a different story.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8: "Lunch"

Lunch at my high school was a daily nightmare. You had thirty minutes of which you spent fifteen standing in line. Then you walked around for five minutes looking for a place to sit. Various cliques had their "reserved" tables, and woe to anyone who sat in a "reserved" seat. Then you had ten minutes to eat, assuming no big shots poked you in the shoulder and demanded that you get up and give him or her your seat.

I had been in several fights with Queen Bees who had demanded that I get up and give up my seat. I always refused. Several times a Queen Bee had knocked my tray into the floor spilling my food all over the floor. The food was slop, but it was still lunch. I was five feet tall and 100 pounds, but I could fight like an angry lion, and I did whenever anyone dumped my food. The assistant principals never punished me for attacking someone who dumped my food. It was always the food dumper who got suspended. I'd get a lecture about learning to control my temper, but I always won in the end with the question, "How would you react if someone walked up to you, demanded that you give up your seat, and then dumped your food when you refused?" Then I lectured the assistant principal on the school's failure to clamp down on the bullies. There were articles in the local section of the newspaper about once a month complaining about unchecked bullying in the public school system. "Want me to tell my story to a newspaper reporter?" I'd ask. That shut up the administrators every time. They were terrified of the local press. And parents.

This lunch was different. I was in the midst of a bunch of girls in the line, and some of them were Queen Bees. No boys bothered me. The Queen Bee in front of me invited me to sit with the In Crowd at her table. There were literally no vacant seats in sight, so I accepted her invitation.

"So who are you?" asked the Queen Bee. "I've never seen you before."

"You've seen me many times," I answered. "You just never acknowledged my existence before."

"What's your name?"

"Nichole."

"I don't know anyone named 'Nichole.' There are only a few redhead girls in this school. You couldn't be any of them. You must be new."

"I've been going to this school since tenth grade. I just never wore a dress or makeup before. This is my first time. The hairdo is new, too."

The Queen Bees at the table all looked at each other with realization dawning. Their mouths all slowly dropped open.

"You're that tomboy, aren't you?"

"Yup."

The Queen Bees all looked at each other, and I could see that they were all getting angry.

"You're not sitting with us!" blurted the Queen Bee in front of me who had invited me to sit with her group. She stood up and grabbed my tray.

"Dump my tray and I'll tear you to pieces in front of the entire cafeteria. You know I can do it because you've seen me do it before."

The Queen Bee carried my tray to a table halfway accross the cafeteria with all of the school's social outcasts sitting at it.

"You sit with the freaks!" she said, and stalked away. Because she hadn't dumped my tray or placed it on the floor, there was no fight. She didn't spit in my food, either. I would have jumped her instantly if she had.

I looked at my dining companions. Two girls dressed entirely in black, two boys who obviously hadn't bathed in a week and smelled, and Reckless Ricky from the chess club who played second board on the chess team. I played first board, so Reckless Ricky knew me well. I gave him his chess club name because he always played for checkmate. Reckless Ricky did not blink when he saw me.

"You sure dress up nice. Strictly for the yearbook portrait, I presume?"

"Yup."

"Pity you don't show up to chess matches all dolled up like this. The opposing team members would all be so distracted they'd blunder all their games away in twenty-five moves."

Reckless Ricky winked at me. He was grinning.

"Would you believe you're the first person to recognize me at first sight today?"

"No surprise at all. Some of these guys actually think you're ugly just because you don't have makeup on. Imagine what that crowd of Queen Bees over there would look like without their flashy clothes, expensive hairdos, and expensive makeup. Without makeup, you'd be the belle of the ball in that crowd over there."

I hesitated. Was Reckless Ricky flirting with me? Come to think of it, this wasn't the first time he had told me that I looked just fine without makeup. I looked up at Reckless Ricky as the freaks at the table watched with interest. "When did you grow the moustache, Ricky?"

"Finally!" he shouted. "I've had it since the beginning of the year. I grew it over the summer. I've been wondering when somebody, anybody, would notice!"

The freaks began to giggle. A girl dressed entirely in black, possibly a friend of Ricky's, addressed him.

"Go on Ricky! Ask her! Trust me! She won't bite!"

Reckless Ricky looked embarrassed. He cleared his throat and then coughed.

"Ummmm... Do you have a date for the senior prom, yet?"

I looked at Reckless Ricky as if he were crazy. "Of course, not! Boys don't exactly line up to ask for dates from tomboys. Especially flat-chested tomboys with a 3.9 grade point average." Back in the 1970s, a 4.0 grade point average was the best you could do.

"Want to go with me?"

"Are you sure you want to go to a senior prom with all the snobby rich kids, especially considering how much it would cost?"

"It's a rite of passage."

"It's an expensive rite of passage."

"Do you want to go?"

"Why don't we skip the senior prom and go see a movie, instead? I've heard that some space epic titled 'Star Wars' is supposed to be released in the summer of 1977. Wouldn't that beat drinking Hawaiian Punch out of paper cups?"

"You really want to skip the senior prom?"

"Do you really want to spend a small fortune to spend a night with people like those Queen Bees over there who just evicted me from their table when they realized who I was?"

Reckless Ricky and I both looked over at the freaks we were sitting with.

"Are any of you going to the senior prom?" he asked.

All the freaks snorted at the same time as if we must be incredibly naive to even ask.

"We hate all these snobs we have to go to school with. You grinds, band geeks, and chess club geeks are the only people who would be caught dead sitting with us."

That answered that. I looked at my watch. Four minutes to eat. Four minutes to shovel. I hated lunch period.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9: "Period 5"

I made it through the hallways well enough, but just inside the entrance to my period 5 class, Advanced Placement English, I got mobbed again. Six boys this time. They pounced on me like yellow jackets on cut fruit at a picnic. A football player, center on the varsity team, moved in first.

"Well, well, well. I've never seen you before cutie pie. Just move into the district?"

Mathers. He was the only player on the football team with good grades. Rather well-mannered for a jock. He wasn't a total jerk. His girlfriend, a sort-of-chubby blond cheerleader with a spectacular hourglass figure, had said to friends of mine that he treated her fairly well. Her only complaint was that he would flirt with other girls even while on dates with her. A compulsive flirt. Oh, well. Most of the jocks were worse.

"I've been here since the beginning of the school year. You just never noticed me before."

The chess team's fourth board player, "Blunderin' Billie" as I called him, walked in the door at that precise moment, and, with a chessplayer's eye, quickly assessed the situation.

"I hate to break up the party guys, but this delectable bag of bones that you see before you is not anyone new. No, it's someone we all know who has a new hairdo and is wearing makeup and a dress for the first time that I know of. Gentlemen, this is your favorite tomboy, Nichole."

The six boys all took a step or two back to get a full-length look at me. Mathers' eyes popped open.

"No, it couldn't be. I'd always thought Nichole was kind of homely."

"I'm standing right here. So you always thought I was ugly and now suddenly I'm not ugly?"

"You sure look different with makeup on!"

"I'm only wearing a light dusting of makeup. Powdered minerals. And mascara. The popular girls who all sit together at a table during lunch probably wear at least three times as much goop on their faces."

Mathers furrowed his unibrow.

"Makes me wonder what those Princesses would look like without makeup," Mathers said with a completely straight face.

I laughed at hearing Mathers use the perjorative "Princesses" and also at watching his face as he looked increasingly horrified at the thought of what the popular girls looked like without their makeup.

"Have you ever seen your girlfriend without makeup?"

The bell rang right then and we all scrambled for our seats. If you weren't in your seat when the bell stopped ringing, you were tardy. Mathers didn't have time to reply. The big guy scrambled for his seat the same as the rest of us. Watching Mathers stuff his enormous frame into a tiny student desk was a daily moment of hilarity for the entire class. It reminded me of a bunch of circus clowns all climbing into a tiny car. The teacher entered and it was all business for the rest of the class until the bell rang.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10: "Period 6"

The worst thing about junior high school and high school is having to find time to go to the bathroom in the scant four minutes in between classes. Because of the paucity of class changing time, I carried all the books for my morning classes all morning, and all the books for my afternoon classes all afternoon. I only made three stops at my locker: just after arriving at school, during lunch, and after the last class. This period I needed to go, and dashed into the restroom that was on the same floor as my Trigonometry class, but at the opposite end of the hallway. No time to dawdle. There never was.

I was greeted just inside the doorway by a mob of Queen Bees.

"If you're not one of the club, you have to pay a user fee!" the ringleader declared. I didn't know her name. I scoffed and tried to push past her, but she stepped in front of me. I saw Lynette and Sara, two girls who had sat at the lunch table with me, in the group. I put my left hand up on the collar of the ringleader's dress.

"Such a pretty dress! Where did you get it? My dress came from the Bargain Basement at Elder-Beerman. It cost three dollars and ninety-nine cents. How much did your dress cost?"

Lynette tugged on the ringleader's sleeve and shook her head. I started to pull on the fabric of the ringleader's dress in a direction out of my way. Lynette gave the ringleader an insistent poke in the side.

"Let her pass! It's not worth the trouble!" hissed Lynette.

The ringleader looked at the other girls. Sara was also shaking her head. The ringleader stepped aside and I went into a stall to do my business. Outside the stall I could hear arguing. I also heard more girls enter the restroom.

"Are you nuts? That girl is the crazy tomboy who beats up anyone who so much as breathes on her lunch!"

"That's the little lion in jeans?"

"Yes! She must have gotten dressed up for her senior portrait! Didn't you recognize her?"

"Nope. Looks completely different. How did you recognize her?"

"I didn't. Heather invited her to sit with us at lunch. None of us recognized her at first. When Heather realized who she was, she snatched up her tray and put it down on the table with the freaks."

I heard another girl speak up. More coming and going.

"I'm done with this. Harassing other girls for money to use the bathroom is stupid. Have a nice life you all."

I heard the door open and shut. I wondered if the Queen Bees had all left. A moment later, the door opened and shut again as a new group, apparently unimpeded, entered and rushed to use the stalls. Time was getting short. I dashed to the sinks, washed my hands, and hit the door running. I made it into Trig class way down the hallway just as the bell started to ring. I thumped my butt down into my seat and dropped my bookbag on to the floor just as the bell stopped ringing. The teacher was writing on the blackboard.

I hated Trigonometry, but it was required for Freshman Calculus at nearly every college in the country. I tried to think of a use for the endless formulas I was required to memorize. I couldn't think of any. My math classes were the only classes in which I did not always make an "A." The teacher stopped in front of me while taking attendance. He looked at me. Looked at the rest of the class. Looked at me. "Slowpoke Sam" from the Chess Club on the other side of the class shouted at the teacher. I called him "Slowpoke Sam" because he had the chess style of a leisurely boa constrictor. He slowly and steadily moved a wall of pawns down the board toward you until you ran out of space to move. He played third board on the Chess Team.

"Teach! That's Nichole! We're both in the Chess Club. I'd recognize that curly copper hair anywhere!" Students in the rest of the class turned to stare at me, and the whispering began. The teacher cut the whispering short by beginning class as soon as he finished scribbling in his attendance book. An office assistant entered a moment later, and the Trig teacher handed over the absence list for the period. And so it began. More formulas. More problems. Ugh.

Nobody tried to flirt with me at the end of class because everybody knew who I was. There was something to be said for entering class at the very last moment.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11: "Period 7"

The foreign language classrooms were all on the other side of the building. Because of the high noise level in all of the foreign language classes, they were buried in a handful of academic classrooms in the Industrial Arts Wing. We were next to the Wood Shop, Metal Shop, Auto Shop, Welding, and Construction classes.

It was a mad dash out the side doors of the Academic Wing across the open courtyard to the Industrial Wing to get to my Period 7 French 4 class before the bell rang. The French teacher, a woman of course, did not strictly enforce the butt-in-seat-before-bell-stops-ringing rule. She always wandered in about a minute after the bell stopped ringing, and didn't count anyone tardy unless they came more than two minutes late. You could still get a tardy from an administrator if you were caught out in the halls after the bell stopped ringing, of course. It was the last period of the day, and everyone was always tired.

The bell rang right when I hit the doors of the Industrial Arts Wing. No administrators in the halls, thank heaven. I dashed into the French classroom a few seconds late, as usual. The teacher hadn't arrived yet. About thirty seconds later, an administrator walked by conducting a sweep for tardy students and class skippers. He caught our French teacher scurrying out of the faculty ladies' room.

"Women teachers, dear sir, are not blessed with bladders the size of a watermelon. And we do not come equipped with point-and-pee!"

She got caught about once a week in the sweeps, and she always said the same thing. We all waited for it.

"Humph!" And our French teacher entered the classroom. She had more personality than all the rest of the teachers in the school combined. Tall, slim, elegantly dressed, heavily made-up, and with a haughty demeanor, you could have easily mistaken her for genuine French, but she was American. She always took attendance in this class with a brief glance to count heads. There were only six of us. All girls. It was always obvious if someone was absent.

She stopped in front of me. She cocked her head. She lifted my newly cut hair with a pencil. Even back then teachers stuck to the rule of avoiding physical touch. It was before the era of Anita Hill and rampant accusations of sexual harassment, but teachers were still just a bit paranoid.

"Are you Nichole?"

"Who else would I be? When's the last time somebody sneaked into a French class?"

The other five girls burst out laughing. They had been staring at me ever since I sat down. I might have looked unfamiliar, but my voice in this tiny class, where we all knew each other well, was a dead give-away.

We immediately started class. Conversational French with a textbook from the Berlitz Schools. There had been a revolt by the foreign language teachers over curriculum a few years ago when enrollment in the second, third, and fourth-year classes dropped below five in every class. The problem was that students only completed half of the textbook every year and started out every year except for the first year at least a full year behind. Classes were misery for the students and impossible to teach. The school board finally agreed to let teachers use the first-year textbook for two full years. Afterwards, the teachers got to design their own third and fourth-year classes. Our teacher wanted students who stuck with her for four years to be able to actually speak some French by the time they graduated.

"Hier, Nichole etait laide, mais aujourd'hui, elle est belle," said the student next to me. Our teacher jerked her head. I understood every word.

"That's not nice! Apologize now!" It was unusual for our teacher to suddenly break into English in the middle of a lesson. Another girl joined the discussion.

"Mais, c'est vrai. Hier, Nichole etait invisible. Aujourd'hui, tous les garcons veulent un rendez-vous avec Nichole."

It became the topic of discussion for the day. Yesterday, I was ugly. Today all the boys thought I was beautiful and wanted a date. There were no boys in the class. There were no men around. The class became a furious denunciation of the shallow behavior of boys and men. "Shallow sniffing dogs" seemed to be the consensus opinion of the male sex. It was all in French. It was the best class ever.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12: "Aftermath"

I wore my dress for an additional two days. No makeup, though. No self-respecting tomboy would toss a shirt or pants into the dirty clothes after only one day. I wore my dress for three days before tossing it into the dirty clothes, not to be worn again until the night of the senior prom.

Most of the boys who had hit on me the day I wore makeup avoided me for the rest of the year. Whether it was embarrassment or just shame, I don't know. "Lecherous Larry" from my first period Chemistry class started to talk to me as if I were a person. He also stopped hitting on the prettiest girls in the class. He explained his changed behavior to me this way: "I realized that all these painted-up beauties were just ordinary girls spending a fortune on their vanity."

Townsend fled at the sight of me. He later dumped his girlfriend, "Big Boobs Barbara." Mathers talked to me as if I were a normal person. The big dopey galoot seemed completely unaware that he had anything to be ashamed of. He asked his sort-of-chubby blond cheerleader girlfriend if he could see her without makeup. Her reaction was near panic. She had acne scars. She wore makeup to cover up the scarring. Mathers did not dump his girlfriend. I kind of liked the big dope after finding that out. He was like Gomer Pyle with good grades.

In French class, I was an object of curiosity to the other five girls in the class. The idea that the invisible tomboy that everybody ignored could become for one day the hottest senior girl in the school fascinated them. And horrified them. They all wondered what would happen to them if they stopped wearing makeup. None of them had the nerve to stop.

One bright sunny and breezy spring day in the afternoon while waiting in the front of the school for the bus to arrive, no-longer-lecherous Larry saw me in the sunlight and stared. He really stared and then walked up to me.

"Did you know that sunlight and a breeze does more for you than even makeup?"

"Yes, I knew. I can't stand in the sunlight for more than a few minutes, though. We freckle-faces sunburn really easily."

"Pity," he said. "You're beautiful in the sun with wind in your hair."

"Don't go back to your old ways, Larry."

"It's not flirting or flattery this time. Simply an observation."

I stood on tiptoe and gave my former nemesis a quick peck on the forehead, and he proceeded to drop all of his books onto the cement. Everybody jerked around to stare. Ah, hell. Two days later Larry had a bookbag just like mine.


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13: "Senior Prom"

As luck had it, "Star Wars" opened in my town the day of the senior prom. All my buddies in the chess club and I skipped out on the senior prom and went to the 7:30 showing of "Star Wars" instead. We all met at the theater. I walked there. It was only a mile, and back in 1977, my town was not considered a dangerous place. All the freaks and geeks at my high school were there. There was a party atmosphere that I didn't remember at any other movie.

After the movie was over, there were numerous cars out in the parking lot with the trunk lids open and ice coolers nestled inside with dozens of bottles of Coke and Pepsi. People gave away bottles of Coke and Pepsi to anyone from their high school who asked. "Reckless Ricky," "Slowpoke Sammy," and "Blunderin' Billie" stood with me beside a car drinking Cokes and watching the party unfold in the parking lot. Someone had the doors of his car open and "Love Machine" by the Miracles blasted out the new-sounding stereo speakers. A girl dressed entirely in black danced with a geek in a white shirt with a pocket protector. Other people in the parking lot started dancing, too. I danced one-by-one with my fellow chess team members. The parking lot was a freakfest love-in, and was, I'm sure, a lot more fun than any stuffy formal dance such as a senior prom. A night to remember for sure.

After high school graduation, my classmates all scattered to the winds, and almost none remained in town. Our high school was knocked down and a new one, even more soulless than the previous one, was erected. The Elder-Beerman where I bought my bargain-basement senior portrait dress has been vacant over twenty years. The movie theater closed fifteen years ago and now has weeds growing up through the cracks of the pavement in the empty parking lot. The front windows have been broken and boarded up forever. The factories where our parents worked are all gone and abandoned. The population of my city has fallen by twenty-five percent since I graduated from high school. My memories of my high school life now feel as lifeless and meaningless as the empty, abandoned parking lots in the place where I live. How could the vibrant, colorful world of 1977 have ended up in such utter desolation?

The End


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14: Bonus Chapter for Chess Players

High School Chess Club

Blitz Game (Game / 5 Minutes)

White: Nichole

Black: "Reckless Rickie"

1\. e4 e5

2\. Nf3 Nc6

3\. Nc3 Bc5

4\. Bc4 d6

5\. d3 h6

6\. Be3 Bb6

7\. Qe2 Nf6

8\. h3 Nd4

9\. Bxd4 exd4

10\. Nd5 O-O

11\. O-O-O Nxd5

12\. Bxd5 c6

13\. Bb3 a5

14\. a4 Bc5

15\. Rdg1 b5

16\. Nd2 d5

17\. Qh5 Be6

18\. e5 Rb8

19\. g4 Qb6

20\. g5 hxg5

21\. Rxg5 g6

22\. Rhg1 Rfc8

23\. Rxg6+ Kf8

24\. Rxe6 fxe6

25\. Qh8+ Ke7

26\. Rg7#


End file.
